De rent stabilized my apartment

[hamdy]

I've been living in a RS apartment since 2010. Last spring, COSO bought the building. They own most of the buildings in my area. And at first they tried to nicely push us out, offering me $75k to abandon my lease. I chose not to do this.

Another tenant was suing them for tons of money in overcharged rent and so they started alleging that the whole building should have come off rent stabilization due to major renovations that took place in 1986. I'm not a party to that lawsuit, but I've been following it with interest.

Yesterday I received a notification that they filed to deregister my apartment as rent stabilized as of January 1 2014 due to "Major building renovations". I presume they're referring to the 1986 renovations as they hadn't even taken possession of the building by then, but they are currently making lots of renovations from new elevator to marble floors and recessed lighting in the common areas etc. I did sign a one-year rent stabilized lease in May 2014.

And I'm just not sure what I need to do now. Do I have to file a lawsuit? Complain to someone? Is there any point since they'll probably just try this same thing next year for all the building renos? This whole thing is so frustrating. I'm getting pretty sick of fighting it.

[TenantNet]

Well first, don't panic. Second, start educating your self. Start here.

Also, do not put any personally identifiable information on the forum.

When you say you were notified, I assume by DHCR. But you tell us little about what it says. You should probably FOIL the entire application from DHCR and get copies of everything that has been submitted.

I doubt very strongly that even DHCR -as bad as they are - would destabilize units in a building based on a rehab that happened almost thirty years ago. But they could be trying for the more current rehabs. So don't assume it was the 1986 work. You need accurate information.

You and the other tenants should probably form a tenant association and speak to a tenant lawyer, one who has experience in this sort of stuff.

And you should also consider speaking with your elected officials. Most are pretty bad and bought by landlords (even the ones who swear they are not), but still in a situation like this it might help. If you can PM to us your building address, we can see if there any organizations in your area that might be able to help.

Remember, you are RS and it will not be that easy to move you out. Hold your ground.

[UWStenant]

Hi, I also live in a COSO building and I am experiencing pretty much the same exact thing. I FOILed and got a copy of the application and they are claiming that the building never should have been stabilized due to the construction done in 1986 and all subsequent stabilized leases were issued in error. Most of the tenants who predate the recent contruction done last year have banded together in our building and filed a response to their application but I was wondering if you could update us on your status/what you did or are currently doing regarding this as you have had a year longer in the process than us.

[TenantNet]

Send a PM to user Hamdy. That should trigger an email to the user.